“You cannot train a man for freedom while he
is in captivity,” Paul Manwaring.
“PIT – stands for prophet in training or
people in transformation. Unless your character is transformed, it will ruin
the growth or ministry that came through your gifting. But the pit you are in,
God’s going to make it into a well as you cooperate with Him so He can grow you,”
‘Brokenness,’ by Graham Cooke.
For years I kept struggling with wondering if I was in a
dry place. After years of this it got to the point where I didn’t know what a wet place was. I have been a Christian
for nearly 29 years. My heart and sometimes my actions would convince people
otherwise. Why was I not feeling like or acting like a follower of Jesus? Where
was the fruit? Where was the freedom? I could never keep peace for more than a
moment. The fruit in me and from my ministry labors would not last and often
decayed. What was wrong with me? Was I even a Christian, if these were the
results? I kept working so hard to be a godly follower. I despised my sin and
temptations. Then all of the stuff I learned in January 2014 set me free. (See
prior 3 blogs.)
Stop trying to stop sinning. Keep the old man buried. Ask God to teach you the fruit of the Spirit and bear it through you. Let God make progress through you as He leads and pours His Spirit into you to grow you into who He desires you to become.
While at the elder’s retreat in early February
I shared some of this transformation. Then one of our elders talked about the
vine and the branches from John 15. Remaining in the vine yields life and
fruit. John 15: 6 ”If
anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown
away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the
fire and they are burned.” About an hour later an illustration hit me as
we were hanging around the fire place. The fire was roaring pretty good. But
every once in a while we would have to add more fuel. The fuel was dry, dead
wood that had been cut from trees and split so it could catch on fire more
easily. It came from a life-less tree that was good for no life or fruit. So it
just needed to be burned.
It is thrown into the fire and destroyed. Lots
of other analogies can come from this but let’s just focus on a branch being
dead and not bearing fruit; even though, this was obviously not a vine or a
fruit tree in the photos.
The mental picture I want you to get is that
the branch was dead and separate from the vine. It could do nothing on its own.
It was worthless for bringing about the fruit necessary for life. This is how I
had been living most of my life as a Christian. I was not hell-bound. I was a
believer. But my fruit was crappy because the old man was still in charge. He had
not been put to death. Christ had not been living through me [Gal 2:20]. The
branch [me] was not bearing good fruit because abiding in the vine and dying to
sin and self was not understood and; therefore, had not yet happened.
So, let’s die to self. Realize the old man was
crucified at the cross and is of no value to the Christian life. Quit
attempting to resurrect the firewood. Burn it! You cannot fix or clean up the
old life. It is dead. God killed it at the cross. You have been raised to a new
life and grafted into the vine so God can bear fruit through you. You are a new
person. The old has gone.
You are not firewood. You are a fruit-bearing
valuable member of the vine, the church, the Kingdom of God. You are His child.
Rest in the vine. Receive His love.
When my daughter was starting to get all this
stuff she was still struggling with identity issues, self-worth and
insecurities [old man thinking]; one night God spoke to her, “How can you think you are nothing when I
thought of you before I made the stars?”
Wow!
“No one wants to die. Even people
who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the
destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should
be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is
Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
― Steve Jobs
― Steve Jobs
